I am an entrepreneur, author, and public speaker on organizational leadership, marketing, and social technology. Today I am co-founder and CEO of SocialxDesign, a new social technology consulting company at the intersection of marketing and human empowerment. For the 2012 election, SocialxDesign advised a number of groups -- including the DNC -- on multicultural outreach strategy.
In prior roles, I served as a senior member of the social-technology team at Deloitte Consulting, chief marketing officer for a publicly traded company, and managing partner of The Conversation Group (TCG), one of the first social-technology consulting firms. I'm a founding fellow at the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR) and a board member at Latinos for Social Media (LATISM).

The Second Hill: How American Longevity Might Rejuvenate the World

@giorodriguez: Are older Americans a burden or an asset? A new look at an old debate

Tim Bratton, executive director of the California Grey Bears

A couple of weeks ago — on a painfully busy Thursday — I checked out of my office in Silicon Valley for a while to play hooky with a new Facebook friend who happens to live in Santa Cruz. To get there I had to take the road from San Jose over the hill to Santa Cruz, for there is no other way. The journey over the hill got me thinking — this could be a day rich with metaphor. For one of the activities that my friend had planned for us was a visit to the California Grey Bears , an amazing social enterprise that’s helping to feed elder Santa Cruzans through a volunteer force of elder Santa Cruzans. Their motto: “seniors helping seniors.”

Founded in the 1970s by two college students and two senior citizens (the term most widely in use back then), the Grey Bears have delivered more than 75 million pounds of fresh produce and groceries to older Santa Cruzans. They do that with an impressive array of assets: a for-profit recycling business that feeds the non-profit mission; a vibrant thrift store which sells everything from vintage clothing to high-end used computer goods (on a good day, you can purchase a used Mac Tower for less than a hundred bucks); a fined-tuned logistical apparatus that sends drivers on more than 100 routes all throughout Santa Cruz County, serving 4,000 people each week. The cost to each customer: just $20/year. To qualify, you don’t need to prove financial hardship. The Bears would just like to know that you are 55 years or older.

At the end of my visit, I had lunch with my friend at a Mexican restaurant. We had many things to discuss. What brought us together that day, in fact, was a far bigger agenda, but one that involved what he calls “senior power.” It’s a topic that I will admit is rather new to me, though lately it had begun creeping into my consciousness. You see, I am now s q u a r e l y in the demographic that organizations like the Bears need to engage — shy of 55, but getting there quickly — to make their enterprises work. For their biggest asset is an army of volunteers, graying like me, and hard at work. Senior power, in the end, is just that: the power side of the bell curve of a large, complex, and misunderstood demographic.

The numbers

There are several things worth noting about senior power. But it all begins with the numbers — the now impossible-to-ignore fact that we live longer. Today, 13% of Americans are 65 years and older. By mid-century the percentage will be more than 20%. And that’s just the biggest, broadest strokes we can use to paint this picture. If you want to dig deeper, check out this interactive graph in the New York Times. By mid-century the number of people over 65 will exceed the number of people under 15. That’s a first for America. But the numbers are trending the same throughout the developing world. Citing the UN study, Minnesota Public Radio last year reported that by “2050, nearly four in five people aged 60 or over will live in the developing world.”

I’ll look at the implications on “developing versus emerging” in a later post. For now, the most important thing to note regarding the new longevity is that it is scaring the bejeezus out of everyone. The graying of America is largely seen as a disaster-in-the-making, soon to wreak havoc on our health-care system, to keep younger folks out of work (because old folks are in the way), to drag down the economy with a growing percentage of citizens who will create less, do less, and yes — the final kick in the pants to our consumer economy — buy less.

“Graying” is a metaphor that’s been driving conversation that is mostly black and white — simplistic, sometimes alarmist, and often lacking in imagination. I suspect that this has much to do with the fact that for most people our aging population is seen as a burden, not as an asset. Again, the lesson from the California Grey Bears — and there are many other organizations leveraging a similar model — is that the greatest asset is its people, the hundreds of volunteers who work pack the produce, deliver it, work the thrift store, support operations. And this is just one operational template — there’s a growing number of organizations that are finding ways to retrain and re-educate older Americans for work (paid and unpaid) that is not only uniquely suited to them but mission-critical for society: e.g., teaching, mentoring, advisory work in entrepreneurship. What might be surprising for folks who study this today is that “longevity as an asset” is not a new concept. It was one of the key talking points of a group of graying Americans of another animal totem that arose in the 1970s — The Gray Panthers, whose founder Maggie Kuhn often said that “old people and women constitute America’s biggest untapped and undervalued human energy source.” The point here is that with longevity comes complexity of the demographic — the stretch between 50 and 80 (today’s average life expectancy) is huge, and a great chunk of it represents people who are ready to create, do things, and consume (though perhaps in a different way; more on that in a moment) rather than drag everything down as the nightmare scenarios would have it. Granted, my optimism might be simplistic as well. But there’s enough evidence to counter the pessimistic view to at least give it equal time.

The moment

There’s one source of evidence, and its equal time is coming soon: the tsunami of gray coming over the hill known as the boomers. If you accept the common definition of boomers — i.e., Americans born between 1946 and 1964 – the first began turning 65 just two years ago. So, at least one thing for sure is that the America-is-graying conversation is going to get a lot noisier. But in the end, it may the quality not the quantity of the conversation that will have most impact. We owe a great deal of insight on this topic to another long-time Californian, Theodore Roszak, whose 2009 The Making of an Elder Culture presaged the coming of a new generation of older Americans that might create the right conditions — and find the right moment — for change. In an earlier book, The Making of the Counter Culture — written at the close of the 1960s — Roszak examined the same generation in mid-flight. You can say that studying boomers has been his life work, which gives The Making of an Elder Culture an uncommon stamp of authority. He writes: “Boomers, who will usher us into senior dominance, are the best educated, most socially conscientious, most politically savvy older generation the world has ever seen.” Not only will they not go gentle into that good night, they will very likely define the night’s agenda. Depending on your political leanings, you may dislike or disagree with the agenda that Roszak imagines that boomers will bring us (hint = this is not your father’s consumerism). But you should be persuaded when Roszak argues that false starts and unicorns boomers might have chased in their youth (they have inspired as much criticism as admiration for their deeds), they have some “unfinished business” and they mean to finish it. And many have the means to finish it. So when you’re having the America-is-graying conversation, you would be remiss to ignore who is graying (right?).

The Second Hill

All this to say that I am with Roszak — I believe we’re on the brink of an elder movement with great potential impact for all society. The numbers, as we discussed, are persuasive; there will come a change. And so is the moment; with boomers joining the ranks in big numbers every day, the time is now. But just as important is a model for activating change. I believe we already know it, but haven’t yet been able to articulate it. I go back to the Grey Bears to illustrate:

--it’s based on the idea that older Americans can find ways to take care of themselves. It’s not just about a handout but a “hand up,” as the Bears like to say.

–it recognizes that older Americans comprise a rather large club, with a diversity of talents, and a range of ages (consider the “sandwich generation”), that can be leveraged to enable more self-sufficiency.

–it’s a model that can be applied to benefit any group, young or old, here (in America), or there (the greater world). Maggie Kuhn was right. Older people are America’s biggest untapped “human energy source.” Perhaps America’s greatest natural resource.

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